When Tracey Bardell’s daughter decided to have cosmetic surgery to get rid of a bump on her nose, she wanted some reassurance of how she’d look after the op.
But despite 30-year-old Holly’s concerns about rhinoplasty, the surgeon couldn’t offer her any visual example of what she could expect.
“She told him she needed to know if the end of her nose was going to look too fat because the top had been narrowed but he just kept saying it would look lovely,” says Tracey.
“It was so frustrating and just left her feeling even more uncertain. She came home and said to me, ‘wouldn’t it be great if you could have an app that would tell you what you’d look like after certain treatments?’.
With no experience in the beauty sector or in software development, Tracey – a sales director in the interiors industry – didn’t pursue the idea until a celebrity warning story a couple of years later put it back on her agenda.
“Molly-Mae Hague from Love Island posted a photo of herself looking really artificial and over-treated, and then said she’d ditched lip and cheek fillers because she looked ‘botched’. She admitted she was shocked by what she’d done to her face and had ‘gone overboard’ with injectibles without thinking things through.
“Holly said to me, ‘if my app was working, she wouldn’t have done that’ so that was when we decided we should go ahead with the idea.”
Tracey, 57, and her husband Andy, who live in Reigate, Surrey, researched available apps and weren’t able to find one which offered the level of accuracy they felt was needed to help people avoid unwanted pillow face or duck lips.
“There is a system used in the States which gives you something like a photoshopped image but it doesn’t represent the actual real-life treatment. We wanted something similar to the software that exists for opticians where people can see how they’d look with different frames before they buy.”
In December 2021 the couple began working with Surrey-based software developers Communere to come up with an easy-to-use app able to mirror cosmetic enhancements most commonly asked for in clinics and beauty salons.
After more than a year in development, they have created U-biotic, which uses 3D facial mapping to allow users to see how a range of procedures would look on their own face before they commit to treatment.
They can adjust the amount of dermal filler, Botox or other injectables added to specific areas like lips, cheeks and crow’s feet to give a true-to-life projection of the results rather than relying on generic before and after images.
The enhanced photo is saved to their phone so, if they decide to go ahead, they can then show it to whichever practitioner they choose as a guide to exactly what – and how much – they want doing.
“The whole idea is based on women or men wanting to be able to experiment before they actually physically go and see someone,” says Tracey.
“When you talk to people who’ve treatments, the majority aren’t happy with them either because they feel they’re too much or too little and that was another reason for the concept.
“I think part of the problem is people don’t know what to ask so they don’t ask anything. When you’re sitting in front of a practitioner, a lot of it can be driven by cost so if someone says, ‘I can give you three areas of Botox for £290’ and you’ve got £290 you think, I’ll do that. But you don’t know what it’s going to look like.
“I’ve experienced this myself. I had a very good aesthetic practitioner who retired, and she recommended another practitioner who wanted £150 consultation fee. I went to him and said I wanted this 6-point facelift and he told me it would cost £700.
“If I’m investing £700 in something, I want to know exactly what I’m going to get in return but they weren’t able to tell me that. They can show you before and after photos but the shape of your face might be totally different than the example. I’ve got very high cheekbones so when I use the U-biotic app and put the volume in my cheeks I look ridiculous. I know that isn’t a procedure I should be having done because it’s not good for my specific face.
“If you go to a very good practitioner they’ll know that but if you go to someone who’s not as experienced they may not know or they may just want to take your money anyway and not care what you look like at the end of it.
“This app is about helping people take back control and make the right choices by giving a snapshot of how they look and the confidence that what they’re doing is actually right for them.”
How does the app work?
You hold the phone in front of you and it 3D scans your face to capture an image.
A mask goes over your face which divides it up into areas like forehead, crow’s feet, cheeks etc.
You tap on the area that you want to improve and use a slider to control how much or little you’d like doing.
With cheeks, you move the slider along until you’ve got as much volume in your cheeks as you’d like. The same process applies for lips. With fine lines and wrinkles, you’re able to filter out the lines so you can decide on the smoothness you want.
After photos and information are saved in a gallery, so you can take your own after photo to a practitioner. For more information visit https://u-biotic.co.uk/ download the app for free or follow Instagram @ubiotic_app